Pressroom

ICYMI: Montana Medicaid Enrollees Succeeding in the Workforce

The national Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a nonpartisan research and policy institute, released a white paper praising Montana’s HELP-Link program, which together with Medicaid coverage has helped boost workforce participation among Medicaid-eligible Montanans by 6-9%.

Montana’s unique HELP-Link workforce promotion program identifies barriers to employment and matches people with opportunities to help remove these barriers. HELP-Link connects Medicaid enrollees with high quality workforce training, employment services, job openings in their communities, and opportunities to advance their careers and earning potential.

Highlights from the CBPP report:

“Programs like Montana’s can help the minority of Medicaid enrollees who can work but are not working find and hold jobs, without the harmful and often counterproductive effects of work requirements.”

“Montana Governor Steve Bullock recently highlighted the success of the program, stating, ‘This model and the evidence of its success comes at such an extremely important time in our nation. While other states are pushing work requirements that have it backwards, we are putting more people to work with higher wages.’”

“The HELP-Link program may be reaching a significant share of its target population: people who are not working and do not have severe barriers to work, as well as people who are working but seek better or more stable employment.”

“Montana is spending state funds on services that could actually increase employment and income for low-income people. In contrast, states that are imposing work requirements are in some cases investing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in new systems to monitor and cut Medicaid coverage for people who are not the target of the policy — those who are already working or may never be able to work — with deeply harmful consequences.”